How to Import a .csv list into contacts? Groups?

I have an iPhone 4, an iPad and an iMac running Mountain Lion as my personal devices. I have a Lenovo T400 running on XP SP3, Lotus Notes 8.5 for mail and Oracle CRM On Demand as my work issued device.

I am loving the integration that iCloud offers. I am amazed at the time savings that it is providing. I spend a lot of time on the road, and a lot of that time I am on the phone using voice activation and Bluetooth.

I would like to import our employee contact list into my contacts. My primary concern is that I capture their telephone extensions, Cell numbers, home numbers and e-mail addresses. I would be happy if that is all I get for now, but ideally I would like to have a complete record that also includes Job Title.

Company Name, Address, local, toll free and fax numbers are common to everyone.

I converted a .xls contact list to .csv and tried to import into contacts on the iMac. It brought the contacts in, but it's a mess. It has things like title in the name, i.e. 'Bob Smith Account Executive' all show up where I would only expect 'Bob'. Can anyone help me to create a Master company record that includes the common elements and then add individuals and their information to it? I suspect that it is simply a case of creating a properly formatted template and then knowing how to identify what needs to be imported and where.

We have approximately 80 Employees, so I would rather take the time to build the template than to try to add everyone individually.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hello there,
I think you are correct in saying that creating a template would help. You can do this in the 'Template' tab within the 'Contacts' preferences.It's not important though, the crucial bit is mapping the relevant fields in your .csv file to the fields of your choice. Set up a new group first in File/New Group, highlight and then click Import

The trick then is to map each pertinent field from your csv file once you have opened it (after choosing the file to import) to the corresponding 'Contacts' address field that you have set up in the template.

You only need to do this for the one contact, uncheck the 'do not import' from the drop down list of options and map the fields together. If your csv file has header columns then you must make sure that you check 'Ignore first card', otherwise leave it un-checked and Import.

MoTM, thank you for the quick reply. I am going to try again and follow these steps exactly in the order that you have set out. I think I know what my mistake was now that I saw this.